Table of Contents

National Incident-Based Reporting System, 1997 (ICPSR 2793)

Principal Investigator(s):United States Department of Justice. Federal Bureau of Investigation

Summary:

The National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) is a
part of the Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR), administered by
the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In the late 1970s, the law
enforcement community called for a thorough evaluative study of the
UCR with the objective of recommending an expanded and enhanced UCR
program to meet law enforcement needs into the 21st century. The FBI
provided its support, formulating a comprehensive redesign
effort. Following a multiyear study and i... (more info)

The National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) is a
part of the Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR), administered by
the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In the late 1970s, the law
enforcement community called for a thorough evaluative study of the
UCR with the objective of recommending an expanded and enhanced UCR
program to meet law enforcement needs into the 21st century. The FBI
provided its support, formulating a comprehensive redesign
effort. Following a multiyear study and in consultation with local
and state law enforcement executives, new guidelines for the Uniform
Crime Reports were created. The National Incident-Based Reporting
System (NIBRS) is being implemented to meet these guidelines. Annual
NIBRS data are archived at ICPSR as 13 separate data files, which may
be merged by using linkage variables. The data focus on a variety of
aspects of a crime incident. The Batch Header Segment (Parts 1-3)
separates and identifies individual police agencies by Originating
Agency Identifier (ORI). Batch Header information, which is contained
on three records for each ORI, includes agency name, geographic
location, and population of the area. Part 4, Administrative Segment,
offers data on the incident itself (date and time). Each crime
incident is delineated by one administrative segment record. Also
provided are Part 5, Offense Segment (offense type, location, weapon
use, and bias motivation), Part 6, Property Segment (type of property
loss, property description, property value, drug type and quantity),
Part 7, Victim Segment (age, sex, race, ethnicity, and injuries),
Part 8, Offender Segment (age, sex, and race), and Part 9, Arrestee
Segment (arrest date, age, sex, race, and weapon use). Part 10,
Group B Arrest Report Segment, includes arrestee data for Group B
crimes. Window Segments files (Parts 11-13) pertain to incidents for
which the complete Group A Incident Report was not submitted to the
FBI. In general, a Window Segment record will be generated if the
incident occurred prior to January 1 of the previous year or if the
incident occurred prior to when the agency started NIBRS
reporting. As with UCR, participation in NIBRS is voluntary on the
part of law enforcement agencies. The data are not a representative
sample of crime in the United States. For 1997, twelve states, fully or
partially participating in NIBRS, were included in the dataset.

Study Description

Citation

United States Department of Justice. Federal Bureau of Investigation. National Incident-Based Reporting System, 1997. ICPSR02793-v2. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2009-07-16. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR02793.v2

Universe:
Law enforcement agencies in the United States
participating in the National Incident-Based Reporting System.

Data Types:
event/transaction data,
survey data

Methodology

Data Source:

self-enumerated forms

Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of
disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major
statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to
these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Created online analysis version with question text.

Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Version(s)

Original ICPSR Release:2001-05-09

Version History:

2009-07-16 The data were updated following receipt of updated files from the FBI, including additional arrestee records.

2008-10-13 The data were updated to remove duplicate records and the codebook was updated to reflect current year standards.

2006-03-30 File CB2793.ALL.PDF was removed from any previous datasets and flagged as a study-level file, so that it will accompany all downloads.

2005-11-04 On 2005-03-14 new files were added to one
or more datasets. These files included additional setup files as well
as one or more of the following: SAS program, SAS transport, SPSS portable,
and Stata system files. The metadata record was revised 2005-11-04 to
reflect these additions.